ObamaCare: Stop me if you’ve heard this before …

posted at 12:01 pm on March 27, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

“What the hell is this, a joke?” That was John Boehner’s reaction to the latest delay in ObamaCare, and he’s not wrong. In fact, it’s such a joke that only one major broadcaster bothered to report it on its evening news:

They probably didn’t take it seriously in the first place. CBS reported that the deadline is, ahem, “fluid,” depending on circumstances:

Insurers aren’t happy at all about this banana-peel punchline. They’d love for this to be over so they can stop having to deal with the White House, The Hill reports today:

The health insurance industry can’t wait for ObamaCare’s first enrollment season to be over so that it can have a break from dealing with the White House, sources on K Street say.

Insurers feel that the administration has taken advantage of them by making repeated delays and changes to the law, even as they have gone above and beyond the call of duty to fix problems with the rollout.

The administration is nursing grievances as well, feeling insurers don’t have the best interests of consumers at heart and should temper their criticism as they do more to make the law work.

The tensions between insurers and the White House were described to The Hill by five healthcare lobbyists, both Republican and Democrat, who requested anonymity to speak freely.

Kathleen Sebelius arrives in Nashville, Tennessee to promote the Healthcare.gov web portal in part by pulling a Chip Diller and proclaiming that all is well with the website and the program:

Perhaps Kathleen Sebelius can explain her Congressional testimony to Speaker Boehner by claiming to have been joking when she insisted that there would be no further delays in Obamacare earlier this month. Sebelius was asked specifically by Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) about any potential pushbacks on the open-enrollment deadline two weeks ago, and replied, “No sir.”

The day prior to that testimony, the spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services told reporters that HHS didn’t have the authority to do so. “We have no plans to extend the open enrollment period,” Julie Bataille said. “In fact, we don’t actually have the statutory authority to extend the open enrollment period in 2014.”

Obamacare has been a long workshop in improv tragicomedy. The delays, regulatory rewritings and extensions are always an attempt simply to live for another day, to put off the political pain of cancellations, or rate hikes, or layoffs, and to manage to get just enough traction to make the law viable.

Millions have now signed up for the exchanges, but it’s not clear that the demographic mix is right to avoid steep premium increases by insurers in 2015. So far, it looks like young people— essential to making the economics of the exchanges work — aren’t signing up in the necessary numbers. The extension is surely a ploy to squeeze every last “young invincible” out of the current enrollment period, and hope the news for the rates in 2015 isn’t so bad.

And after that? It’s anybody’s guess. All we know for sure is that whatever Kathleen Sebelius says today may not be operative tomorrow.

Their self-congratulatory PR effort shows the real joke of this program, as I conclude in my column:

The biggest joke, though, is the pride in which the White House promoted its five millionth sign-up earlier this month. The imposition of the Obamacare regiment kicked as many as six million Americans out of their existing plans by the end of 2013 despite the “you can keep your plan” promise, which means that we still have not yet hit the break-even point on market churn. …

If this system works as well as the Obama administration insists, where are all of the uninsured? Why haven’t we seen massive numbers of enrollments from the beginning if that was such a crisis as to require the kind of intervention Democrats imposed, at an estimated cost of $1.5 trillion dollars over the next ten years?

That is the real joke, and it’s on us. Don’t expect us to laugh about it. Instead, we should double our efforts to jettison the jokers who are responsible for it.

Finally, IBD offers the real reason for the extensions and the Obama administration attempts to dodge demands for the hard numbers from HHS:

No, the real reason for the deadline delay is that Obama is desperate to get lagging enrollment numbers as high as he can, any way he can.

It’s the same reason the administration refuses to produce data on how many ObamaCare “enrollees” have actually paid their premiums: HHS officials insist they just don’t have that information.

But this week Reps. Dave Camp and Kevin Brady discovered that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has been telling insurers to report both enrollment and payment data. That, the lawmakers say, strongly suggests “the administration knows who has enrolled and paid their first month’s premium.”

In addition, eight state-run exchanges — each built with federal grant money — have managed to produce nonpayment data for some time now.

That picture isn’t very pretty. In Maryland, 46% of enrollees haven’t paid their premiums so far. In Vermont, 36% are unpaid. Overall, about one in five people in these states has yet to pony up.

If that average holds nationwide, it means that fully 1 million people haven’t paid for their ObamaCare plans yet and could lose their coverage.

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I don’t think it’s fair to compare her to Baghdad Bob. By the time he was saying those absurd things, the regime was in tatters and he was probably winging it as best he could. Cerberus on the other hand is in constant touch with the administration and these lies are planned well in advance.

If these actions regarding ObamaCare, by everyone from the president on down the administrative chain, were in regard to anything other than a federal government program, the RICO act would be invoked and they’d be facing charges for racketeering.

Keystone cops. Gallows humor. Obamacare is the destruction of what use to be the finest healthcare system in the world.

People don’t have insurance. People who think they have insurance don’t have insurance. People who have insurance don’t understand that they cannot afford the large deductibles that must me paid first.

Doctors, hospitals, patients, and especially taxpayers are getting screwed by the dims. It must be reversed, and soon.

Pope Francis, Obama meet in March 2014
53s
President Obama confirms Vatican Secretary of State raised issue of Affordable Care Act contraceptive issue, says it did not come up in talks with Pope Francis – @petermaercbs

Fluke all those insurers who decided to band together and support tyranny, the destruction of their own industry, and the ensuing premature deaths of their fellow citizens instead of banding together for the cause of liberty.

Speaking of “who is paying”… are these first month premiums – or “quarterly/bi-annual/yearly” paid folks?

Because when folks try to use HC services – and then find out a certain Dr or hospital isn’t covered, they will just stop paying for useless care.

When they get a bill – out of pocket or deductible – then realize coverage won’t kick in, they will cancel their plans.

When the net HC cost for services start eating into month to month bills – no Obama, they won’t cancel their cable or cell phone – they will cancel their HC payments

If you have to lie about paid signups, while dragging people to the first month and pray they are paying – the continuance of a program is doomed from the start. We are just seeing the tip of the iceberg of this drastic failure.

Is single payer the goal – perhaps – but if Rep’s were wise, they would hammer “just go back to what was and what worked”

This creates a real dilemma. Since enforcement of Obamacare is now administered by the IRS, thanks to Judge Roberts tax declaration, and the Obama administration is changing the tax rules ad hominem, can we all just ignore our federal income tax? He has no power to change tax laws.

I have already seen patients with their shiny new “bronze level” cards trying to pick up prescritions on plans cancelled just two months in. Will get much worse next month when the forced-coverage month elapses and the insurers can finally cancel for non-payment.

They keep putting on these shills who are so grateful that for the first time in their lives they have med insurance. What they don’t know is what it is going to cost them and what is the deductible. In for a surprise.

Fluke all those insurers who decided to band together and support tyranny, the destruction of their own industry, and the ensuing premature deaths of their fellow citizens instead of banding together for the cause of liberty.

Typical, greedy, short-sighted morons …

ShainS on March 27, 2014 at 12:20 PM

I was in the IT department of one of these insurers when this was being enacted. A lot of these companies administer Medicare and are subject to CMS’s rules and regulations. CMS can cutback are even put a company out of the Medicare business.

I am not sticking up for the insurance companies, but they were pressured to participate in Obamacare with the implied threat of losing their Medicare business.

Am I mistaken or did we have a big old government shut down by the Republicans that I had to hear about ad nauseam as pretty dang near the end of the world for this exact thing? We should barricade some open air memorials.

Because the insurance companies need months to figure out that everyone that signed up has a pre-condition and that the premiums and deductibles will need to get even higher next year. Just before the 2014 election. I think that part falls into the every cloud has a silver lining category.

Is single payer the goal – perhaps – but if Rep’s were wise, they would hammer “just go back to what was and what worked”

Odie1941 on March 27, 2014 at 12:23 PM

Oh, it was quite clear in 2009 that single payer was the ultimate goal. But even with the Congressional super-majority, there weren’t enough dedicated progressives to ram that through. Even within the last couple of weeks, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, has been touting single payer and full government control being the solution to ‘fixing’ the EpicClusterFark.

Unfortunately, for most of the past 4 years, this mendacious Administration and its sycophantic ‘Ministry of Truth’ aka mainstream media have driven the meme that what was before was even more broken, substandard, unfair, non-functional, racist, etc than the EpicClusterFark currently is.

This Administration, and their supporters, have 2 very big fears over the EpicClusterFark.

One is, despite the propaganda campaign that the pre-ACA system is irretrievably broken, the American people will prefer to totally role back the ACA and then take simple measured steps to implement the few popular components. That would halt the movement towards single payer.

Two, they fear that too many of the American people, including LIV, will really look at the EpicClusterFark and place the blame for it exactly where it belongs – on the big government progressives and that will end any concept that big government can be more efficient, fair, and effective than the private sector / free market.

Insurers feel that the administration has taken advantage of them by making repeated delays and changes to the law, even as they have gone above and beyond the call of duty to fix problems with the rollout.

The insurers made their bed with Obama, they can just STFU and sleep in it!

I agree. The best part of ACA – is it was rolled out to actual failure – and is a great point of comparison, instead of the “perception” about what was so wrong and how ACA would be so right. As tech folks love to say “I need data, even bad data, to make it better”

The emotional ploy of “preexisting conditions and non insured millions” means nothing now, because those preexisting folks are the reason for the increased price, while the uninsured are still uninsured, by their own doing.

Because this “tax” was levied on all, it will slowly effect “all” To think around 1-2% are now effected, without the company mandate kicking in – and its still a disaster – lets us know how bad it’s really going to get. Factor in the rule changes and delays (which aren’t done due to success) – the entire premise and roll out is a complete failure.

Frankly, I’m surprised more insurers haven’t fled already — this is a disaster.

matthew8787 on March 27, 2014 at 1:01 PM

Many are afraid of losing their Medicare business which is dependent on the whim of CMS.

Humana tried to warn their clients and sent out a letter which told the truth about Obamacare.

CMS came down on them hard (I was in that meeting) telling all Medicare insurers that these people were NOT their clients. Medicare recipients are the clients of CMS. No letter can go out without the explicit approval of CMS.

Insurers aren’t happy at all about this banana-peel punchline. They’d love for this to be over so they can stop having to deal with the White House, The Hill reports today

Waahhhh! Nobody put a gun to their heads and made them be a party to this debacle. When they signed on to this they were too busy rubbing their hands together and counting the money they were going to get once this was foisted on the public. They just don’t like the reality that they, too are getting the high hard one in this. Welcome to the party, pal.

Many are afraid of losing their Medicare business which is dependent on the whim of CMS.

Humana tried to warn their clients and sent out a letter which told the truth about Obamacare.

CMS came down on them hard (I was in that meeting) telling all Medicare insurers that these people were NOT their clients. Medicare recipients are the clients of CMS. No letter can go out without the explicit approval of CMS.

Kaffa on March 27, 2014 at 1:18 PM

Courage is doing what is right regardless of the cost.

Humana tried and folded.
They should have taken CMS to court and made the intimidation public, when it would have done some good.

Obamacare is meant to do two things: force employers to drop coverage and bankrupt private insurers. This will create a healthcare “crisis” where the people will be clamoring for a solution, which will be single payer.

As days go by I become more convinced that none of this was meant to be smooth and painless.